Since 2011, we carefully have analyzed and documented the abuse of Medicaid-funded mental health services for poor children in Richmond Public Schools.

The disheartening aspect is the wanton willingness of public officials, in cahoots with their public and private sector cohorts, to blatantly ignore and disregard the widespread negative impact of program abuse and inefficiency on poor children and their parents who are desperately in need of mental health interventions.

We naively assumed that once empirical facts were presented, corrective action would be forthcoming. Yet in the past three years, from 2011 to 2014, countless attempts to prompt governmental intervention were ignored and rebuffed. To this day, the problem persists unabated.

From the outset, we acknowledged the apparent Medicaid billing fraud among some private mental health service providers and recommended that they be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. We conveyed this to the appropriate state and federal authorities. However, nothing of substance has been done other than minor, rather benign public relations charades that amount to pennies compared to the multimillion-dollar fraudulent enterprise.

Therefore, it is no wonder that far too many of our at-risk children end up in jail, prison and the cemetery because their psychosocial and economic problems are systematically and intentionally ignored. The children are labeled educationally challenged when, in fact, they are sentenced to death at an early age due to bureaucratic indifference, injustice and neglect.

Everyone involved in this system, except those most in need, continue to benefit and profit while the suffering of children and parents festers.

KING SALIM KHALFANI

The writer owns Commonwealth Consultation LLC.

DR. GERALD A. FOSTER

The writer is a children’s mental health advocate.

Richmond